


Dust to Dust

by Bazylia_de_Grean



Series: Adra Bán [8]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Angst, Death Wish, Depression, Eidis may seem calm and just a little sad but for most of her story she is deeply unhappy, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22155643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean
Summary: Eidis keeps it together, until they are back in Caed Nua. Later, too. Most of the time. And if sometimes she can’t stop crying late into the night, no one save for the Steward can hear.
Relationships: Thaos ix Arkannon & The Watcher, Thaos ix Arkannon/The Watcher
Series: Adra Bán [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/533203
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5
Collections: Adra Bán





	Dust to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> [things that happen when you can't sleep... as the tags say; this is just full of happy thoughts of all kinds]

After that first outburst, she seems collected. Well, even, considering what happened, as she overhears her friends say one night when they think she is asleep.

Eidis keeps it together, until they are back in Caed Nua. Later, too. Most of the time. And if sometimes she can’t stop crying late into the night, no one save for the Steward can hear if she lives at the keep and everyone else at Brighthollow.

It is a little easier when she is busy, looking after Caed Nua and her people. Even if sometimes she has to throw away another half-written letter because it got wet with tears. But usually, duties help her not to think about certain memories.

She forces herself to spend time with her friends, even if she doesn’t really want to, and sometimes that helps. Sometimes, it just makes everything more difficult. But still, she keeps trying, even if sometimes she fails.

It looks as if things were slowly getting back to normal. And if she is a little sad sometimes – who isn’t? And if she does not continue her research on ancient Engwith and its history – it is only understandable, under the circumstances. And besides, interests change, don’t they?

Over time, it all becomes a routine. Once every few days – or weeks – there are simply evenings when she has to retire early. No one really asks. And when someone does, she says that it is nothing, that she is tired, that she just needs some sleep. She misses times when sleep helped.

Weeks stretch into months, and finally the wheel of the seasons turns fully; a year has passed. Eidis is not certain why that hits her so hard. It’s not as if she is suddenly able to see the memories more clearly – they are always just as sharp and just as painful; sometimes she can just push them aside for longer. It’s not that the date is significant in any way – she has been living in that day ever since it happened.

But for some reason, that night everything comes back with such force Eidis cannot stop crying almost until dawn. And that is when something dawns on her, with terrifying clarity.

She thought there were things she really, truly wanted, before. Many times. To stay at home with her parents. To find a new home in Dyrwood. To regain her memories from another life, to put the questions together and find answers. To save Thaos. None of it turned like she hoped it would.

And now she thinks she knows why. Because for the first time, she understands how it is to want something with her whole being, so much that nothing is left but tears and shaky breaths and despair. Eidis wishes she could regret this, but she no longer has it in her.

She has been trying. She has duties. She has friends – family. Is it anyone’s fault they do not really know her, when they were busy with their own lives and their own troubles? Is it anyone’s fault but hers? Is it so strange her sorrows seemed so unreasonable? So… intangible and insignificant, in comparison, when they were just echoes from another life?

Eidis has duties. To people, to places. To herself, too, she supposes, though that seems like a very strange concept. But right now, she cannot bring herself to care. In the morning, she will probably keep trying, again. But right now, she wonders how would it be not to have to think about her duties. Or memories. How would it be not to have to think at all. Simply to… disappear. As if she was a hazy dream she feels like sometimes.

For a moment, she lets herself consider that. No thoughts. No breaths; just a gust of wind. It brings her an odd kind of peace, to imagine that the world would go on, that it would forget. That maybe it wouldn't even notice.

She is only ashamed – but not enough to be able to stop this feeling – than for an Eothasian, who is supposed to keep hoping and waiting for a new dawn, the thing she really hopes for is to _die_.


End file.
